Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is increasing in importance as a standard for private area networking (PAN) and local area networking (LAN) such as home networking. Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) is one of the key protocols that form the foundation of the UPnP standard. In the UPnP standard, SSDP is used by UPnP resources, such as devices and/or UPnP services, to advertise their availability in a network. When a UPnP device becomes available, it periodically multicasts “alive” message in the network to advertise its availability. Likewise, a UPnP service also advertises its presence in the network periodically in the same manner.
Enabling networked consumer electronics (CE) devices to work together collaboratively is the primary goal of the UPnP standard. CE devices range from sophisticated personal computers to single function devices such as a thermostat. The life span of CE devices can also range from less than a year to many years. Competitive forces in the CE industry drive the introduction of new services on CE devices on a frequent basis. The new services are usually introduced with new CE hardware and/or through firmware updates. However, the introduction of new hardware with enhanced services is not cost effective to the consumer because obtaining such new services requires purchasing new hardware, even though the consumer's existing hardware is still functional. In addition, the new hardware may not offer backward compatibility with the existing hardware. This incompatibility also occurs with the firmware updates. Further, if the updated services are “buggy”, it is not easy, or sometimes it is impossible, for a consumer to revert back to the old services. There is, therefore, a need for a method and system that provides upgrades to UPnP devices and services without requiring changes to the device hardware/firmware.